Okay, technically not a movie, but episode 5 (‘The Hot Tub’) of Seinfeld, Season 7. The episode revolves around Elaine’s friend Jean Paul, a marathon runner from Trinidad who has previously missed his chance to compete in the Olympic marathon because his alarm clock didn’t work properly. (No, it was not the snooze…) This time he has come to New York to run the famous 26.2 Miles.
The cast of Seinfeld. Copyright Castle Rock Television.
To make sure he doesn’t oversleep this time, Jerry offers his couch to Jean Paul to sleep on and he promises to wake him up in time. Kramer’s hot tub ruins that plan however. Be sure to watch this episode!
As is often the case, things stop working when fixing is impossible, expensive or just annoying. In the latter category, my Garmin HRM-run chest strap stopped working just when I was visiting the States. I figured it was the battery, but of course I didn’t pack any batteries.
I bought some quite expensive Duracell 2032 batteries and replaced the old with the new. My watch however did not find the strap. I carefully followed the instructions on both Garmin’s site and on their forums, including waiting half a minute (and longer) between taking the old battery out and putting the new one in, but nothing worked. As the batteries came in a two-pack, I tried the second one too. Nothing, so I figured the strap was broken. I usually keep all my receipts, but, of course, when I got home, I couldn’t find this one. So, no warranty. Therefore, I bought a new, less fancy strap.
A couple of weeks later, I ordered some batteries online and I figured I could use some CR 2032’s, so I ordered ten of those, but this time, from a different brand — GP. I tried them in my ‘old’ HRM-run strap and guess what, it worked again. I talked to someone at Garmin and he said ‘Oh, yes, Duracell’s do that some times.’ Nice… it would have saved me a lot of money knowing that before investing in another strap.
Moral of the story: try different brands of batteries. If you use a Garmin HRM-run chest strap, try other brands than Duracell.
If you use a weight scale from Medisana, you can only sync your weight stats with the Vitadock app and website. As I could not find any way to get these data into Garmin Connect, I wrote a converter which you can find at https://www.reuneker.nl/files/vita/. It’s limited in the sense that it only allows you to import your weight (so not BMI, bone mass et cetera), but it works.
This early Bill Murray-comedy is no movie about running, but a fairly typical summer camp movie — dad sends kid to summer camp, he doesn’t want to go and has trouble making friends, makes friends in the end. Running is featured, however, as the grand finale between two rivalry summer camps (after a hotdog-eating contest, some swimming et cetera).
This movie’s from 1979 and it shows. It’s still funny, but I guess you’ll have really like Bill Murray or be in that summer-camp-movie mood to enjoy it. Or sit through it and wait for the running, of course.
Today, I did a long, steady run of 22km mainly through the farmlands around here. The weather was abominable for August, but it always feels more rewarding finishing a long run in the pouring rain. On the upside, the cows were very friendly today.
A friendly cow somewhere between Schipluiden and Schiedam
Today, we are going to do an easy calculation. We’re going to convert mile pace to kilometer pace. It’s fun to calculate this by hand, but for convenience, you can also use the calculator and many others at runcalc.site.
Say we want to know how fast a 6 minute mile is in terms of kilometer pace. In other words, how much time does a runner need to run a kilometer if he or she needs 6 minutes for a mile?
First, we multiply 6 by 60. To go from minutes to seconds. 6 times 60 is 360 seconds to run 1609 meters (i.e. one a mile). Now, we divide 360 seconds by 1609, to get the number of seconds needed to run one meter. 360 divided by 1609 is 0.22.
The next step is to multiply that number by 1000, to get the number of seconds needed to run a kilometer. The result is 223.74 seconds.
The last step is divide this number by 60, to get from seconds to minutes. This one’s a bit tricky, because we want minutes and remaining seconds. If you simply divide 223.74 by 60, you get 3.73 minutes, but obviously that’s not what we want (Because we could ask: how much time is 0.73 minutes?) So we remember the 3 minutes, which is 180 seconds (that’s 3 times 60). Now we take our original number, 223.74 seconds and subtract 180 seconds, resulting in 43.74. That’s the number of seconds remaining, meaning that a 6 minute mile corresponds to a 4 minute and 44 seconds kilometer.
If you don’t want to do this by hand, go over to runcalc.site and let the website do it for you.
I have added a training pace calculator to the site. You can enter a recent race time or (reasonable) time you’re striving for and calculate pace (ranges) for your long runs, easy runs, tempo runs, yasso’s and faster sessions. Below is an example, but be sure to check out the calculator for yourself.
I have added the famous Riegel race prediction, based on the formula below.
Predicted time = Given time * (new distance/original distance)1.06
Easy, right? You can check out the calculator now. Of course, be cautious in using its output. It’s nice to predict a marathon time based on a recent 10K time, but it does absolutely not guarantee anything. You should train accordingly.
Today, I’ve added a Yasso calculator. While a Yasso doesn’t have to be ‘calculated’ (just use your marathon hours as minutes and minutes as seconds), but I’d like to know which pace (per km or mile) I should use. I have used the following calculation.
Kilometer pace: (minutes60+seconds)/8001000 (and revert to minutes:seconds)
Mile pace: (minutes60+seconds)/8001609 (and revert to minutes:seconds)
So, when your (desired) marathon time is 3:30, you should do a Yasso (800 meters) in 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Using the formula’s above, this comes down to a kilometer pace of 4:22 and a mile pace of 07:22.
